


♡ silent love ♡

by wiitchpunk



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aphasia, F/F, Nonverbal Character, Nonverbal Communication, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2019-10-22 02:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiitchpunk/pseuds/wiitchpunk
Summary: ☽♡ soulmate / highschool AU ♡☾⋆☆ chelldos ☆⋆Everyone has an inscription on the wrist of their left arm that tells them the first words that their soulmate will speak to them. But Gladys does not





	1. I

Gladys walked quickly down the hallway, the sleeves of her black turtleneck sweater reaching past her palms, ensuring that no one could see her wrists. Head down, she navigated the halls easily, avoiding eye contact or communication with any of her peers. She wanted to give off an unapproachable, intimidating air, to show them that she was above them, too good to waste time talking to them, but truthfully, she was running late due to her own poor time management. She had an appointment with the school counsellor to talk about her many issues. She had a lot of them, not that she would tell any of her classmates – that would be a sign of weakness, first of all, and secondly, she preferred to avoid talking to them entirely. If she was late to the counsellors, they would contact her parents, which would make them even more worried about her, and she would have to put up with even more of their fretting – asking why she didn’t just _try_ to make friends, to talk to someone, to do anything other than hole up in her room and pour through stacks of books on psychology, inventions, things kids her age didn’t care about. She picked up her pace. She couldn’t sit through another one of their talks, stone-faced and silent. Her isolation had begun early, as early as she could remember. As a child her parents had dressed her in long sleeves and sweaters, anything that covered her wrist, which was painfully, glaringly blank.  
  
     As she rounded a corner, focusing on her books, and on the edge of her sleeve, which she gripped in her left palm to ensure it didn’t ride up, she looked up just in time to crash into a girl walking in the opposite direction. Both of them fell backwards, books and papers spilling across the floor. She opened her eyes and looked up and the girl who had run into her. She had brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, and an orange sweater around her waist. She was in a tank top, white with some logo that she didn’t recognise. She could see a scrawling black mark on her left wrist, although she couldn’t read it, as her hands both flew to her chest, her fist moving in a circle. She made other, fluid motions with her hands, and Gladys stared, slightly confused.  
     “What?”  
The girl repeated the motion, and she realized that she was probably using sign language.  
     “Oh, I don’t…” she began to speak then caught a glimpse of a clock hanging on the wall. She was definitely late. “I don’t have time for this, I have to go,” she said, her voice becoming pointedly cold again now that she had regained her bearings. She hurriedly picked up her books, trying to shuffle a few scattered papers into a somewhat orderly pile. The other girl began to pick things up as well, handing her a textbook and a stack of papers – important papers – that were now covered in dusts that other students had tracked inside. As she slid them on top of Gladys’ other books, she once again saw the letters on her wrist, although she didn’t bother reading them, not caring, not wanting to know. She felt a pang of anger, an emotion she had grown accustomed to. She turned away from her, not bothering to thank her.  
     “Please watch where you’re going next time.”  
She saw the girl’s smile fall, and felt a sick satisfaction from it, although it was fleeting. She quickly began to walk down the hall, although she did turn and look at her once more. She was staring at her, hands at her sides and papers still on the floor at her feet. She clenched her jaw, pushing down the guilt that began to rise up. _She didn’t know how lucky she was, what a privilege wearing that tank top really was_. As Gladys finally arrived at the counsellors, now noticeably late, she found that her reasoning hadn’t pushed down the guilt. She brushed it off, though, deciding that she really didn’t care how the girl felt.


	2. II

     Despite coming home late, Gladys’ parents weren’t home. It wasn’t surprising, she was used to the house being empty. Being alone seemed to be her natural state of being. She was sure that the counsellor had already called her parents, saying that she was still not taking the sessions seriously, that she wasn’t showing up on time, that she wasn’t improving. She wasn’t sure what she needed to improve, anyways. It wasn’t like she could just go and make friends unless she wanted to hide her arms for the duration of their friendship, dodging questions and lying to them. She found it better to simply avoid it altogether – the last time she had tried to form a friendship, she had needed to move schools due to the bullying. She had only been in the first grade but the lesson had stuck with her – she had showed her classmate her wrists, thinking it was something cool, something to be proud of like her parents had told her it was. His response had stuck with her though,  
      _“So, you’re going to die alone?”_  
He had laughed, and other students had turned around, stared, joined in on his laughter. They had said other things, too, but she didn’t hear any of it. The memory was fuzzy, her brain felt like it turned off as soon as it happened, and it had felt like she was watching herself from outside of her body. The news spread that Gladys, who was already the weird, quiet, nerd, had no soulmate. The bullying increased tenfold after her peers found out about her wrist, and it got to the point where the boy who she had originally showed her wrist to pushed her against the wall. He called her a freak, said there was she didn’t have a soulmate because there was something wrong with her. She knew he was right, and she had felt something snap inside of her. Her head had gone fuzzy, and the next thing she knew, she was on top of him, blank-faced, hitting him as hard as she could. Her parents pulled her out of the Black Mesa school district after that, although they didn’t have much choice, as the faculty made it clear that she was not welcome back. They sent her to Aperture, which was the district for gifted students. Her grades were high enough already, but it was a lot farther away from their house, which meant a long bus ride every day, sitting alone in the front, head bent over a book to try to block out everyone else. After what happened at her old school, she never tried to make a friend again. She knew better.  
  
     It rained the next day, dark storm clouds covering the sun and shading the town from the early-spring sun. Gladys stood at the bus stop, wearing a stark white sweater that went past the palms of her hands and holding a black, plain umbrella. She enjoyed the rain, it gave her a break from overheating in long-sleeved shirts during the warm parts of the year, plus she found the sound and the darkness comforting. The bus pulled up, and she took her usual seat in the front, pulling out a book before anyone could talk to her. She found herself lost in _The Brain Itself_ , one she had read before but enjoyed enough to revisit, until she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up and saw the girl from the day before. Her brown hair, still pulled back in a ponytail, was wet with rain, as was her orange jacket, this time over her shoulders. She smiled and waved, and gestured at the seat next to Gladys. She looked down at the seat, then back at the girl, then immediately turned her attention back to her book, trying to make it clear that she didn’t want company. She felt her sit down next to her anyways, leaning up against her as Gladys had not moved over to make room. She made no effort to move, although she wasn’t fond of the sudden contact. The girl interrupted her reading yet again but tapping her shoulder and showing Gladys her phone. She looked at it, then looked back down at her book, feeling that if she ignored her long enough, she would go away. After a moment, she put her phone in front of her book again. This time a message was typed in the notepad app.  
      _do you have a phone?_  
Gladys looked up at her.  
     “Yes.”  
She didn’t take it out, though, knowing that it would just lead to more interaction. She held out her phone again, and Gladys audibly sighed.  
      _my name is chell! what’s yours??_  
She closed her book.  
     “Nice to meet you, Chell, my name is Gladys. Now please let me return to my book, I’d much rather read it than talk to you.”  
Chell’s face dropped to the same expression she had had when Gladys last talked to her, and she felt a familiar pang of guilt, but she pushed it aside, glad that she was at least no longer bothering her. When she got off of the bus, she made an effort to walk faster than Chell so that they weren’t stuck walking together. When Gladys got to her locker, Chell walked past her, not stopping to talk to her again. She watched her walk down the hallway, and couldn’t help but wonder why someone like Chell would even want to get to know someone like her in the first place.


	3. III

     

Chell sat next to Gladys on the bus again, showing her messages she typed out on her phone. Most of them she ignored, or gave one-word answers to.  
      _what are you reading?_  
Gladys turned the book so that she could see the cover. She inspected it and nodded.  
      _looks interesting!_  
Gladys said nothing.  
      _i like your hair!_  
She reached up and touched the tip of her hair. It was bleached and toned white, although there were darker roots coming in at the top. It had been longer, but she had cut it to chin length since the bleach had damaged the ends, and she preferred it to be perfectly smooth and straight.  
     “Thank you.”  
It felt strange to accept a compliment from someone, but she felt that replying with an insult would be a bit too cruel, so she just sat in silence for the rest of the bus ride, Chell occasionally pushing her phone in front of her book to show her another message. By the time the bus pulled up to the school, Chell had gotten about ten words out of Gladys, which she found almost impressive. Still as they got out, she walked away as quickly as she could, hoping to avoid any further interaction.

Gladys was used to eating lunch alone. She usually sat at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, reading or doing homework, avoiding eye contact with her peers as much as she could. As she was flipping through her History textbook, she saw a familiar figure, clad in orange, sit across from her. She made a point of not looking up, but soon a cellphone was again shoved in her face.  
      _hi!_  
She sighed.  
     “Hello, Chell.”  
Her eyes then wandered up to her wrist, which was exposed, as her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. A single, short word stretched across it like a scar more than a birthmark. It simply read “ _What?_ ”. She took it in, then chuckled.  
     “Jesus,” she looked up at Chell, who looked slightly confused at her sudden laughter. “That’s really your inscription?” Her eyes immediately fell to the single word stretching across her wrist. “That’s probably what everyone says when they first meet you, what a terrible inscription!” She was laughing now, but her heart was beating quickly. “How do you expect to find your soulmate with that? _What_ , that’s hilarious. But it’s also sad,” she looked at Chell, who appeared to be clenching her jaw, staring at the table. “You’ll probably die alone with an inscription like that. Doesn’t that bother you?”  
Chell pulled her hand away, standing up and walking away quickly without even bothering to look at Gladys. She watched her leave the cafeteria, pulling her sleeves down as she walked. She saw a few people glance her way, but wasn’t sure if they had heard her. Her heart slowed, and she felt an overwhelming surge of guilt, one that she could no longer push away.


	4. IV

     

Sitting alone on the bus almost felt strange. Gladys felt her heart speed up when they got to Chell’s stop, and her hands felt suddenly very cold when she saw her, brown hair still up in a ponytail, orange jacket still tied around her waist, step onto the bus. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt today, though. She didn’t even slow down when she passed Gladys, who had intentionally left a space on the seat. She went to the back of the bus and sat next to a somewhat nerdy looking boy in glasses and a button-up. Gladys felt her stomach drop, and was overwhelmed with an intense, unexpected rush of guilt and, strangely, jealousy. She was showing him things on her phone, and he was saying something back, but she couldn’t hear what over the drone of other students talking and shouting. Chell looked up momentarily, almost making eye contact with Gladys, who was uncomfortably twisted around in her seat to get a clear view of them. She quickly turned around, burying her face in her book, which she couldn’t focus on. After awhile, she gave up and set it down. The ride to school was long and quiet.  
  
     Chell seemed to be making an effort to avoid her, and by the time lunch had rolled around and she had walked by Gladys’ table without even glancing at her, sitting with a group of kids she didn’t even know, she had realized that maybe this wasn’t Chell actively trying to make her miserable, but instead, perhaps, maybe, this was her own fault. She stood up and threw the contents of her tray into the trash can, no longer feeling like eating alone.  
She passed Chell in the hallway twice – her orange jacked suddenly seemed impossible to ignore, and any glimpse of a girl with a brown ponytail made Gladys’ heart speed up momentarily. By the end of the day she felt exhausted, tired enough to nearly forget that her parents had booked her another appointment with the school counsellor. She remembered as she was standing at her locker, and a quick glance at the clock on the wall told her she was almost late. She grabbed her backpack and began speedwalking down the hall, rounding corners without any thought, and then crashed into someone else. She caught herself before she fell backwards, then looked up  
    “Chell,”  
She said nothing.  
_Of course she said nothing._  
Then Chell pushed past her, jaw tightly clenched, leaving Gladys standing alone in the hallway, watching her disappear into the crowd of students.  
  
     The counsellor’s office made Gladys anxious. There were posters with cartoon characters saying “hang in there!” and rainbow trim on every surface they could manage to staple it to. Her counsellor was so focused on her computer that Gladys had to clear her throat loudly to announce her presence. She turned around, fake smile plastered on, motioning for her to sit down. She did.  
     “Hey, Gladys! I thought you weren’t going to show up, your session was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago.”  
Gladys nodded.  
     “I’m sorry, I… I ran into someone.”  
     “No worries, no worries,” she pulled out a notebook with a kitten on the cover that read “go get ‘em tiger!” “Now, what would you like to talk about today?”  
Gladys paused, then took a deep breath.  
     “I…” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, at her wrist, barely peaking out of her sleeve. “I think I may be a bad person.”


	5. V

    Gladys sat on her bed, hunched over a large book titled “American Sign Language for Beginners”. She raised her hand to her forehead then pulled it away, almost like a military salute. _“Hello”_. She leafed through the pages, looking for more basic words that she wanted to learn first, then stopped when she saw a familiar one. A hand closed into a fist, circling your heart. _“Sorry”_. That was what Chell had signed to her when they first met. All she had wanted to do was to be nice. Gladys had run into her and she apologised. She set the book down, another wave of guilt washing over her as she remembered again how Chell had pushed past her, the look on her face as she had quickly walked away.  
  


    Gladys had somehow ended up spilling out everything to her counsellor, and by the end of it she had recommended that she saw a more specialized therapist for potential Borderline Personality Disorder and depression. She had also suggested learning sign language as a way to try to patch things up with Chell, although the idea of confronting her had been eating at Gladys for the entire weekend. That combined with the prospect of a new therapist had left her feeling nervous and irritable, and it didn’t help that she had been alone for the entire weekend as both of her parents were too busy with work to spend more than an hour with her a day. She found it strange to dislike being alone, now that she had had a taste of company, even if it wasn’t even a particularly good one. But, she had been left alone regardless, with nothing but her thoughts and a pile of books. She flipped the page again, to a diagram of someone interlocking their pointer fingers. _“Friends”_. Her heart sank deeper. She quickly turned the page, to a picture of a woman holding her hand up with her middle and ring finger folded down. _“I love you”_. Gladys suddenly felt very flustered and quickly closed the book. She had learned enough words for the night, she decided.


	6. VI

    Chell walked past her again on the bus, sitting with the boy in the back again. Gladys had expected it, but her stomach still sank as Chell’s pace didn’t even slow walking past her seat. She looked at the pictures of the book she had taken on her phone, trying to memorize them all. The alphabet was long, and she was having trouble memorizing all of the different letters, although she wanted to in case she forgot a word and had to spell it out to get her point across. If Chell even wanted to speak to her, anyway, which she somewhat doubted. Chell ignored her for the rest of the day, and Gladys found that she was still too nervous to say anything. As the final bell rang, she found that she was quickly losing hope. She couldn’t even find the nerve to try to apologise, she really was a bad person. She shoved papers into her backpack, threw it over her shoulder, and began to walk down the hall, head down, her thoughts drowning out the noises around her, she narrowly missed running into someone rounding the corner yet again, then looked up to see a flash of orange. Before she had time to be nervous, or second guess herself, or even think about what she was doing, she blurted out,  
  
    “Chell,”  
    Chell turned around, seeming to almost brighten up when she saw her, then her face turned dark, an expression that looked unnatural on her, and she started to walk away. Gladys, still acting mostly on impulse, reached out and grabbed her wrist.  
  
    “Wait, please,” she began, her voice shaking now. Chell faced her, but her expression didn’t change. Gladys held up her hand, shaking, and moved it in a circle around her chest. “Chell, I’m sorry,” she began, but then she heard a small giggle. She looked up, and saw that she was laughing, although she still looked somewhat nervous. She pulled her hand away from Gladys and circled her own chest as well.  
  
    “Wh- No, you don’t have to be sorry, I was the one who was wrong, you were so nice to me, and-“ Chell reached out and grabbed her hand, then folded it into a fist. Gladys remembered the diagram, with the hand in a fist, not a flat palm.  
  
    “Oh,” she looked down at her hand, then felt a hint of a smile form on her own face. “Oh, I was doing it wrong.” She suddenly felt dizzy, shaky, she wanted to run but she was frozen in place. “I can’t even apologize to you correctly, I…” She took a step back. “I really am terrible. I- I’m sorry to bother you.” Gladys turned to walk away, but Chell’s hand reached out and touched her shoulder. She turned and saw that she was holding out her phone again, but it was open to the contacts app. The name read “Gladys” and the line for the number was blank. She passed the phone to her, and Gladys felt her heartrate slow a little as she input her phone number.  
  
    “Here,” she said giving it back to her. “Thank you.” It was all that she could think to say. Chell typed something quickly then showed the screen to her.  
  
    i’ll text u later! see ya!  
  
    Gladys smiled, and nodded, then waved as she watched her walk away. It wasn’t until Chell had disappeared down the hall that she realized just how much of a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders.


End file.
